Slain nephew ‘achieved dream’ by becoming cop, uncle says

JOHNSON CITY (AP) >> After a stint as a volunteer firefighter, David W. Smith achieved his dream of becoming a law enforcement officer by joining the department in his upstate New York hometown. Hundreds of fellow officers and agents turned out for the funeral Friday of the 18-year officer, four days after he was killed on duty with his own gun.

“What he really wanted to do was be a law enforcement officer,” said uncle John McConegly, who gave the eulogy at Sarah Jane Johnson Church in Johnson City, a village just outside Binghamton. “All his life, that’s all he wanted.”

The church was filled with mourners, including many of the hundreds of state troopers, deputies and other police from across New York and the Northeast who turned out for the funeral.

Authorities said Smith, 43, was shot with his own weapon by a medical office technician just after the officer had arrived at the scene of a reported disturbance Monday morning. Another officer then shot to death James Clark, also 43. He died at a hospital a few hours later.

Police said Clark had just been arguing with co-workers when he ran outside and jumped Smith while he was getting out of his patrol car, taking away Smith’s handgun and shooting the officer twice. Investigators are still trying to determine why Clark, a married father with a son, attacked Smith.

Binghamton Police Chief Joseph Zikuski, who also runs the police department for Johnson City, recalled an act of heroism from 2002 when Smith saved a boy from a burning building.